Ruroken Manga Translations update...
June 4, 2004 - Long time no update, and I can't guarantee any future ones, either. I'm kinda surprised I'm updating the site myself, but I figure this is as good a place as any for me to talk about anything Kenshin, right?
So this update-slash-Kenshinblog-entry is a fairly straightforward one. Basically, after a guerilla visit to my parents' place in the States (I got a call from my mother telling me that I was going to visit the next day, and the tickets were booked--something about a first-class ticket that was about to expire), I managed to snag a copy of Viz's version of RK volume 1 (and managed a few glances at the other three volumes out thus far). That's right, I'm a proud owner of the English processed-tree-carcass edition of Rurouni Kenshin. A few thoughts, though nobody's listening...
First of all, I don't think I have to tell anyone that I'm biased. Anyone who visited this site in its heyday can tell you the kind of heart and soul I put into the work, and how enthusiastic I felt at the kind of reception it got. I was happy to see that the same kind of enthusiasm and hard work was put into this volume.
One of the first things I noticed was that, instead of translating "de gozaru" as I (amongst others, including the anime translators) did, they translated "sessha" instead. I liked that. (Not to mention, the first volume reads a whole lot better with "this one" littered throughout the dialogue than "my pardons." :P) And they've got a pretty good translation on their hands. Not the most accurate, but it's true to the story, and that's one of the things that matters most.
This is where the word "but" comes in.
See, the thing is, I've always been a stickler to characters, and their voices. "This one" is a great start, but so far just about everyone sounds the same. I like Gerard Jones' editing style--I've seen the voices he's given to characters like Tatewaki Kuno in Ranma 1/2 (not to mention other characters in Ranma like...oh, I dunno, Ranma?)--so I'm wondering what's going on. Where's Kenshin's poetic rambling? Yahiko's brashness? What the hell is Sano doing, talking about "buying" and "selling" fights, and why does it seem like even he mixes up which one he's doing? The one voice I think works perfectly is, strangely enough, Watsuki.
There was one particularly brilliant line that made me snap my fingers and think, "why didn't I think of that when I was editing? Come to think of it, why isn't more of THIS in the dialogue?" and that line was in the first chapter: "...but in the face of such awful truth, the naive lie she tells is so much better. If this one had a wish..."
I'm harsh on the editing style. A lot of it is because I feel like RK's my baby. That's not necessarily right--I could liken it to stealing a child from a carraige, raising it like my own, and finally returning it to the parents further down the line, only to object to the child's upbringing after a few months. I would say that, beyond the extremeness of kidnapping compared to taking someone's intellectual property (from a common sense point of view rather than an RIAA/MPAA point of view), the analogy is appropriate. But I digress.
There are numerous other nits I have, mostly stylistic (as you've seen, I'm one for as much Westernization in the word-for-word department as I can get...I guess I'll talk about that in a bit), but one thing I noticed, and noticed quickly, was that the spelling of "rurouni" alternated between that and "ruroni," with a bar over the o (which I do not remember the HTML escape for, so forgive me). Copy editing needs a bit of work, I think.
I also don't care for the font. It's a little too comicky--too humorous for the drama, too serious for the funny. The one they used in Eva would've been great. Alas.
Personally, were I advising Mister Jones, I would've suggested that he be more consistent with what the Joe Consumer most likely already knows--the anime. Not necessarily taking things word-for-word, but you know. Use something along the lines of "that I do" (yeah, I know people find it annoying, but hey!) instead of "this one," can that whole "fight merchant" thing, and so on. Kenshin has a drastically different voice in the anime dub than he did in my editing, but that voice, that slightly weary, everyman voice, worked. The dub script lines sounded like things people might SAY (which is kind of a 'duh!' thing, since the VAs ARE saying it...), flowing naturally (for the most part), instead of feeling awkward. I would hope that was possible when it comes to comics, too, since that's what I was striving for with my translations. See? Bias.
Other things I would've appreciated are small bits, like liner notes. The glossary that they already have is a good start, but I keep thinking about things like later volumes of Evangelion and Azumanga Daioh, not to mention the RK DVDs, and I think it's a really, really big mistake not to include them. RK's steeped in Bakumatsu/Meiji history, not to mention the distinct Japanese flavor which the editing crew is so eager to capture. I'm also a big fan of editor freetalk. Kodomo no Omocha's Sarah Dyer was one of the greatest examples of why. I don't remember if the editor-freetalk concept carried to the actual volumes (I'm pretty sure it was in a couple of volumes), but I loved reading the lettercol from the promotional single-issues. I only wish more editors did that. I mean, Watsuki did it, too, and I loved that he did it. (Kudos to the Viz crew for translating all of that, by the way, including the "secret lives of the characters" sections I skipped over.) And I do these blogupdates, right? (Don't make that face, you know what I mean.) It's my little soapbox, and it brings you there at the screen and me closer together.
I guess since I spent so much time working on RK, I also forgot one thing: the voices I had in the beginning weren't what they became later on, either. Things change. Certain words and phrases were translated differently, I say. I got a better feel for the dialogue. I didn't have to run through all the hurdles the commercial editors do. There's a hell of a lot about the manga-publishing industry I haven't seen or experienced, and I probably won't, since I highly doubt that's going to be a career thing for me (seeing as, for one, I plan on living in a primarily-Francophone environment without anything remotely resembling fluency in French, not to mention that it's just not my thing).
So here's a word of encouragement to Mister Jones, one that odds are he's not going to ever read. I love your stuff. You brought me Maison Ikkoku, which is my other favorite manga of all time, and the way you brought out each character, from Yotsuya's mysterious and funny ramblings to Akemi's more streetwise, cut-the-crap tone to Godai just being annoyed, was one of the reasons I got addicted to manga in the first place. I know you can do better than this, and I'm really looking forward to when you get a better feel for the characters. 'Cuz that's gonna leave people breathless.
So this update-slash-Kenshinblog-entry is a fairly straightforward one. Basically, after a guerilla visit to my parents' place in the States (I got a call from my mother telling me that I was going to visit the next day, and the tickets were booked--something about a first-class ticket that was about to expire), I managed to snag a copy of Viz's version of RK volume 1 (and managed a few glances at the other three volumes out thus far). That's right, I'm a proud owner of the English processed-tree-carcass edition of Rurouni Kenshin. A few thoughts, though nobody's listening...
First of all, I don't think I have to tell anyone that I'm biased. Anyone who visited this site in its heyday can tell you the kind of heart and soul I put into the work, and how enthusiastic I felt at the kind of reception it got. I was happy to see that the same kind of enthusiasm and hard work was put into this volume.
One of the first things I noticed was that, instead of translating "de gozaru" as I (amongst others, including the anime translators) did, they translated "sessha" instead. I liked that. (Not to mention, the first volume reads a whole lot better with "this one" littered throughout the dialogue than "my pardons." :P) And they've got a pretty good translation on their hands. Not the most accurate, but it's true to the story, and that's one of the things that matters most.
This is where the word "but" comes in.
See, the thing is, I've always been a stickler to characters, and their voices. "This one" is a great start, but so far just about everyone sounds the same. I like Gerard Jones' editing style--I've seen the voices he's given to characters like Tatewaki Kuno in Ranma 1/2 (not to mention other characters in Ranma like...oh, I dunno, Ranma?)--so I'm wondering what's going on. Where's Kenshin's poetic rambling? Yahiko's brashness? What the hell is Sano doing, talking about "buying" and "selling" fights, and why does it seem like even he mixes up which one he's doing? The one voice I think works perfectly is, strangely enough, Watsuki.
There was one particularly brilliant line that made me snap my fingers and think, "why didn't I think of that when I was editing? Come to think of it, why isn't more of THIS in the dialogue?" and that line was in the first chapter: "...but in the face of such awful truth, the naive lie she tells is so much better. If this one had a wish..."
I'm harsh on the editing style. A lot of it is because I feel like RK's my baby. That's not necessarily right--I could liken it to stealing a child from a carraige, raising it like my own, and finally returning it to the parents further down the line, only to object to the child's upbringing after a few months. I would say that, beyond the extremeness of kidnapping compared to taking someone's intellectual property (from a common sense point of view rather than an RIAA/MPAA point of view), the analogy is appropriate. But I digress.
There are numerous other nits I have, mostly stylistic (as you've seen, I'm one for as much Westernization in the word-for-word department as I can get...I guess I'll talk about that in a bit), but one thing I noticed, and noticed quickly, was that the spelling of "rurouni" alternated between that and "ruroni," with a bar over the o (which I do not remember the HTML escape for, so forgive me). Copy editing needs a bit of work, I think.
I also don't care for the font. It's a little too comicky--too humorous for the drama, too serious for the funny. The one they used in Eva would've been great. Alas.
Personally, were I advising Mister Jones, I would've suggested that he be more consistent with what the Joe Consumer most likely already knows--the anime. Not necessarily taking things word-for-word, but you know. Use something along the lines of "that I do" (yeah, I know people find it annoying, but hey!) instead of "this one," can that whole "fight merchant" thing, and so on. Kenshin has a drastically different voice in the anime dub than he did in my editing, but that voice, that slightly weary, everyman voice, worked. The dub script lines sounded like things people might SAY (which is kind of a 'duh!' thing, since the VAs ARE saying it...), flowing naturally (for the most part), instead of feeling awkward. I would hope that was possible when it comes to comics, too, since that's what I was striving for with my translations. See? Bias.
Other things I would've appreciated are small bits, like liner notes. The glossary that they already have is a good start, but I keep thinking about things like later volumes of Evangelion and Azumanga Daioh, not to mention the RK DVDs, and I think it's a really, really big mistake not to include them. RK's steeped in Bakumatsu/Meiji history, not to mention the distinct Japanese flavor which the editing crew is so eager to capture. I'm also a big fan of editor freetalk. Kodomo no Omocha's Sarah Dyer was one of the greatest examples of why. I don't remember if the editor-freetalk concept carried to the actual volumes (I'm pretty sure it was in a couple of volumes), but I loved reading the lettercol from the promotional single-issues. I only wish more editors did that. I mean, Watsuki did it, too, and I loved that he did it. (Kudos to the Viz crew for translating all of that, by the way, including the "secret lives of the characters" sections I skipped over.) And I do these blogupdates, right? (Don't make that face, you know what I mean.) It's my little soapbox, and it brings you there at the screen and me closer together.
I guess since I spent so much time working on RK, I also forgot one thing: the voices I had in the beginning weren't what they became later on, either. Things change. Certain words and phrases were translated differently, I say. I got a better feel for the dialogue. I didn't have to run through all the hurdles the commercial editors do. There's a hell of a lot about the manga-publishing industry I haven't seen or experienced, and I probably won't, since I highly doubt that's going to be a career thing for me (seeing as, for one, I plan on living in a primarily-Francophone environment without anything remotely resembling fluency in French, not to mention that it's just not my thing).
So here's a word of encouragement to Mister Jones, one that odds are he's not going to ever read. I love your stuff. You brought me Maison Ikkoku, which is my other favorite manga of all time, and the way you brought out each character, from Yotsuya's mysterious and funny ramblings to Akemi's more streetwise, cut-the-crap tone to Godai just being annoyed, was one of the reasons I got addicted to manga in the first place. I know you can do better than this, and I'm really looking forward to when you get a better feel for the characters. 'Cuz that's gonna leave people breathless.